|
For fair use only:
Weapons, Cash and Chaos Lend Clout
to Srebrenica's Tough Guy
By John Pomfret,
Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, February 16, 1994
SREBRENICA,
Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable
apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave
stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette
tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a
pathetic heap.
"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as
scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the
house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin.
"He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."
Reclining on an
overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage fatigues, a U.S. Army patch
proudly displayed over his heart, Oric gives the impression of a lion in his
den. For sure, the Muslim commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the
U.N. Security Council has declared a protected "safe area."
Perhaps the
time for toughness in Bosnia is nearing an end. The problem, though, is that
hundreds of men like Oric who still want to fight dominate all three sides in
this 22-month-old war. Nobody controls them; they have access to plenty of
weapons and lead many young men. And, if anything, Balkan tradition is on their
side.
As the United Nations seeks to make a cease-fire work in Sarajevo
under the threat of NATO airstrikes, officials face the issue of how to
neutralize men like Oric. "I won't let these people destroy the peace," British
army Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, told people in
Sarajevo last weekend, referring to fighters who kept firing after the
cease-fire began. "If we find out who they are, we will put their pictures on
television and tell the world they are not serving your interests."
But
Oric and others like him have other plans -- in Sarajevo and elsewhere. For him
and his counterparts within Bosnian Serb and Croat paramilitary units, the war
has been a godsend. While the vast majority of the 44,000 people crammed into
this enclave about 50 miles east of Sarajevo have no fuel, Oric rents out his
car -- a shiny black Volkswagen Golf. While most people spend their days and
nights without electricity, Oric has power 24 hours a day. His generator runs on
black-market diesel oil. It's only natural, because he's the biggest dealer in
town.
These days Oric's men aren't fighting much -- although
occasionally they sneak up behind the observation posts established by the
Canadian U.N. troops on the borders of the "safe area" and take potshots at the
3,500 well-armed Serbs besieging Srebrenica.
His troops' main task is
making a nine-hour trudge, across Serb lines, to the next U.N. "safe area" to
the south: Zepa, where the Ukrainian U.N. troops are more amenable to deals than
the 150-odd Canadian infantrymen here.
A formidably muscled 27-year-old
with a patchy black beard, Oric, a native of Srebrenica, kicked around for
several years after graduating from trade school, where he learned metalworking.
In 1987, out of work in Belgrade, he joined the Serbian capital's police
department and within several months was transferred to the republic's police
force, participating in a crackdown on Muslim ethnic Albanians.
"I'm a
man of action," he said in a recent interview. "I like adventure."
The
highlight of Oric's career came when he served for two years as a personal
bodyguard to Serbia's nationalist president, Slobodan Milosevic, the man
credited in the West with igniting Yugoslavia's conflagration.
"I was a
professional," Oric said. "It was a good, secure job."
Oric left the
Serbian police early in 1992, when Serb nationalist fervor reached its peak. He
was back in eastern Bosnia when the war broke out that April.
Last
winter, a Serb attack on the Muslim villages of Cerska and Koljevic Polje pushed
Oric and his men into Srebrenica. If not for the intercession of U.N. troops,
Oric would either be dead, in a prisoner of war camp or living in the hills.
But Oric, who was wounded three times, sees it differently: "The U.N.
saved the Serbs from our counterattack. We were ready to take it all back."
Part of Oric's appeal to this refugee-packed town is that he tells
displaced Muslims what they want to hear. He will win them back their homes; he
will avenge their dead mothers and fathers, raped sisters and cousins.
"As long as I am in Srebrenica," he said, "it will never be Serb. We
will protect the hearths of our people. We will never be Palestinians."
|
